Pyre Box Office: Vinod Kapri’s Tiny Film Refuses to Slow Down as Haldwani Outdraws Mumbai

Vinod Kapri’s Pyre is the smallest film in the top ten — and the one refusing to go away. The Himalayan drama has collected Rs 2.07 crore net in India in 12 days, per BoxOfficeIndia24, with a gross of Rs 2.45 crore; its second Tuesday, November 10, brought in Rs 23 lakh, up 5 per cent on Monday. Its best day remains the first Sunday, at Rs 50 lakh net. The first week closed at Rs 1.50 crore, according to Film Information. The film is still adding shows in its third week — tracked live at Rs 13.99 lakh on Wednesday afternoon, with advance booking already open for Thursday.

The numbers are tiny next to Ramayana’s hundreds of crores, but the context is the story. Pyre began on around 80 screens, grew to 400 shows by day five on word of mouth — and then lost 70 per cent of its shows when Ramayana arrived. It is now running on roughly 90 shows across India, yet Kapri says almost all of them are playing at around 80 per cent occupancy. Bollywood Hungama reports that in Haldwani, the Uttarakhand town where the film is set, it is selling more tickets than in Mumbai for the first time — and has outlasted bigger October releases including Tu Hai Meri Kiran and Prem Keetanu.

Kapri has been unusually open about how close this film came to not existing. In an interview with Hindustan Times, he said every OTT platform rejected Pyre despite its 18 international awards, and that his company’s bank balance fell to Rs 7,000 during the struggle to release it. He and his lead actors have since travelled to theatres in Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Kanpur and Lucknow to meet audiences. That is the old-fashioned way films survived before opening weekends decided everything — and Pyre, a quiet story of an elderly couple in a Kumaon village watching their children leave, is proving the method still works. A film does not need 3,000 screens when 90 full ones will do.

Pyre stars debutants Padam Singh Kapri, 80, and Heera Devi as an elderly couple facing old age and loneliness in a remote Himalayan village, with lyrics by Gulzar and a score by Oscar winner Mychael Danna. It premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November 2024, winning the audience award for best film, and released in Hindi and Malayalam on October 30. The film that cut its shows is the one we tracked here: https://filmverse.in/ramayana-day-6-final-box-office-94-10-crore-tuesday-worldwide-823-crore/

Watch the official trailer below:

Pyre released in cinemas on October 30, 2026.

Source: BoxOfficeIndia24, Bollywood Hungama, Film Information, Hindustan Times and TrackTollywood. All box-office figures are trade estimates.